Acknowledgments in Books and Articles and PhDs: They Message
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/surprise-messaging-article-book-acknowledgments-karen-gross/
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Background: My Experience with Acknowledgments
Yup, there’s a piece I wrote on acknowledgments in 2017 pictured above. I added the link. I read the acknowledgments written in every book I own. For real. I have and do read obituaries and wedding announcements too. I’ve written about both. They all matter; they all have meaning.
And to be clear here, in case you perhaps rightfully decide not to read the above photographed and linked piece (it’s the holidays after all), I write books and have written many acknowledgments that have been published in them. And, I have a new co-authored book with Dr. Edward K.S. Wang emerging from Teachers College Press in September 2024; so the experience of writing acknowledgments is fresh in my mind and in my memory.
And, I need to add one more current event because I just read the acknowledgment in a book I’ll name momentarily to my DC book club members because it was so poignant and touching — on many levels, especially if one knows the author’s life experiences. I am referring to the Acknowledgments in Abraham Verghese’s newest book, The Covenant of Water. In the Kindle version, the specific acknowledgment I want to reference occurs on page 770 of 775 numbered pages and right before the extensive notes. No shock that many never read these acknowledgments.
The acknowledgment to his love partner is moving, deeply evocative. Every time I read it (and the Latin phrase at the very end), I get teary-eyed. It is wonderful to love so deeply and have a partner who cares reciprocally and then to disclose that intimacy for the world to see.
What this Piece is Not About….
This posting is not about whether Harvard should or should not fire Dr. Claudine Gay. It is not about her testimony before Congress in response to Representative Stefanik’s not so hypothetical hypothetical. I have written about that already. It is not about whether Dr. Gay should resign.
This posting is also not about the plagiarism (or lack of appropriate attribution or inadequate citation or borrowing to note some of the phrases used) with respect to what Dr. Gay apparently did (or did not do) in her academic work. But, there is one exception to this sentence and it deals with the plagiarism (the copying of two sentences) in an acknowledgment in her dissertation (assuming facts as reported are true).
I leave the plagiarism topic to others, many of whom have already written on all sides of the issues, including a very recent thoughtful (but harsh) essay in the NYTimes by John McWhorter. The issues are too conflated with politics and the answers are vastly more nuanced than we care to admit out loud.
And, there are many unanswered and important questions on the plagiarism issues. What was Claudine Gay’s reasoning and explanation for the omitted quotation marks and the “taken” words? Was there intent? Awareness way back then? And why is Congress investigating this? What exactly is their role in private college plagiarism cases? None as best as I can tell. Can you imagine Conress investigating a resume defect of a CEO of a private non-publicly traded company? The whole mess is fraught with difficulty — above and below and beyond politics, invoking race and gender and leadership and academic traditions and policies and rules and need for parity and cohesive thinking.
As a former college president, I learned that there are times to stay silent and there are issues where one’s voice only adds to the confusion and does not clarify.
But, I do want to speak about taking a part of someone else’s acknowledgement and using it as one’s own as Dr. Gay apparently did. And, others are treating the plagiarism problem as a whole and not parsing out the acknowledgment as a separate issue — which I think it is. That latter issue is one on which I can speak. And for me, that is not about academic plagiarism; it is about emotional plagiarism. Let me explain.
The Taking of an Acknowledgment
An acknowledgment is actually vastly different from an academic text. It is an opportunity for a scholar or author to express his, her or their appreciation and thanks to those who helped them achieve the given publication. It is not about citations; it is about feelings. It is the one clear chance an author gets to share something deeply personal about how the work got published and who the people are behind the proverbial curtain on whom the author’s success stands (rests?).
The two lines taken by President Gay are from Dr. Jennifer Hochschild’s published work where Dr. Hochschild wrote of a mentor (quoting here): “[My Mentor] showed me the importance of getting data right and of following where they lead without fear or favor” and “drove me much harder than I sometimes wanted to be driven.” Dr. Gay split the sentences above to be sure but the words are the same. The mentor is obviously not the same either.
Taking language from an acknowledgment is like taking someone’s feelings, taking something personal. It is taking something relational. It is totally not about taking academic ideas or words in a paper or book. For me, it is worse in some senses (although all plagiarism is unsound and wrong for many complicated reasons). Taking intellectual ideas differs from taking someone’s feelings.
Now, we often use love phrases of others; we take lines from movies. We repeat poetry and song lyrics that are not our own and we say them or sing them to others. We might even put them in obituaries or on a tombstone. But, in print, in a dissertation, one hopes the author can find his or her or their own words, their own expression of feelings.
I might want to take Verghese’s words were I in a position to do so but I never would. They are his. In my current acknowledgment in our forthcoming book, I name several people (and use initials for one). And I thought about the words of thanks carefully. I could repeat them here but that would spoil their appearance in the forthcoming book. But, readers here can know I meant everything I wrote. It was and remains deeply personal. And I hope that those I reference read and take in the acknowledgments I wrote to and for them and for the world to see; I hope they take them into their minds and hearts.
So, what bothers me is the lifting of sentences by Dr. Gay in an acknowledgment because it strips her (Dr. Gay) of owning her own feelings and expressing them. Yes, she can be inspired by the expressions of another in their acknowledgments but, as was true in her testimony on that now famous hypothetical, she gave up a chance to let her voice truly be heard. That’s a lost opportunity, a lost voice, a lost sense of emotion. The latter called for moral outrage; here acknowledgments call for affirmation and affection and influence and gratitude. Heart. But, in both cases, there is a shared absence of voice.
For me, who wears my acknowledgments on my sleeve so to speak, taking someone else’s words to express feelings is, in some senses, a sad statement about the author — they couldn’t or didn’t express their own feelings of gratitude.
Can you hear a wee yikes?
Taking someone’s acknowledgment is not about plagiarism; it is about depth of character and depth of feelings and heart. One wants all of those in our leaders.
